


In The Pursuit of Loot (And Happiness)

by Rokko Hera (Regina_Hark)



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddlebeast and Snugglefiend, Cuddling and Snuggling, M/M, Slow Build, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2859881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regina_Hark/pseuds/Rokko%20Hera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vaan wasn't a good person. </p><p>Nobody cares about the reasons or the why. Hell, he didn't care himself! He's a bad guy, making his living off other people. Eventually, he'll be hanged. So when it came to sneaking into the Palace and making off with loot, why wouldn't he take the chance? But he didn't expect how much trouble he would find himself entangled in. Only trying to make it out with one single piece of a loot, a shiny stone from the Palace vaults.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Pursuit of Loot (And Happiness)

 

Vaan wasn't ever a 'good' guy. 

Good in that good way folks tell tales of 'good' children with their noses to the grindstones and just about anything could happen. Miracles even. Maybe they would get picked up a mysterious benefactor who spoil them rotten? Maybe they would go out into the world to seek their fortune and come back rich?

Being the youngest of a pair of siblings, he was double-blessed and if his life was a mere tall tale, all he would have to do is lay back and wait for his story to unfold. Who knows... What if he came across a princess and was taken on a journey to save the world? It was crazy but only if Vaan had a pure soul, surely somehow he would have an interesting life.  

But if anyone had to strip him to his gooey core, they'd find a pair of hands looking to take a wallet and some change...

From the moment he came kicking out of the womb, he already snatched a earring from the midwife and was on his way, pulling the wedding ring off his mother's finger, before he was interrupted. Keyword: interrupted. His father took one look at him on his first birthday and declared privately to his mother, “I don't know how he did it but I found 250 gil in his shoes. Help me find which of the neighbors he took it from before they notice!”

Obviously, Vaan was destined for greatness. His older brother, Reks, thought different.

“Stop stealing stuff.” His brother would say, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him for all he's got. And Vaan would always have a full load of things bursting out of his clothing: gil, small toys, bracelets, letters, notes and papers that looked super important. It was his way of bragging to his brother. Reks never looked impressed, his face would pale and he would fold his hands together as if in prayer. “They cut off the hands of thieves, you know.” He'd say over and over, gesturing to his palms. “How would you steal then?”

“With my feet! And if they took my toes, I would steal with my nose!” Vaan would preen as he as he squeakily reply, before twisting himself out of his brother's grip. “And if they took my nose, I would use my mouth, my greatest weapon! Like so...” Using his jaw and leaning in, he'd swipe Reks' precious blue pendant with his teeth and fly down the payment. Shrieking for his parents' protection for this unwarranted abuse as they stormed into the house.

His brothers, unfairly strong and with longer limbs, would always catch him and swing him until he was praying to all the saints and puking mercies. And his parents, the evil monsters, would stand and watch in amusement as Reks tried to shake the greed out of him.

All it did was made him greedier.

When his brother wasn't making him return everything he stole, Penelo, his friend, would. But she was far, far more reasonable. Vaan always had a habit of sneaking through backyards and running off with little things nobody would miss. A ball could easily be forgotten. The kids at school certainly didn't. Who cared about a few shiny stones or a missing carrying bag. As long as Vaan wrote his name on it, who cared he where got it from?

Penelo on the other hand, liked collecting feathers and flowers and stringy bits, which wouldn't be stealing per say if she didn't snatch off people's clothes. And hats. She adored grand hats decked out in large blue chocobo feathers and stitched with silver and white little lacy patterns that was incomprehensible to them as children. Those hats always looked as if tiny people sowed each and every stitch with such care and grace. She never wanted the whole hat but only a piece to have. And Vaan could understand that, he felt the same way towards those weird hats with blue feathers. They never seen a blue chocobo!

But Penelo always had to have some sort of weird justification.

She only took things that technically didn't belong to the people in the first place. “People don't grow feathers and flowers belong to the soil,” she babble, while snatching anything of his that could be hers. And he would give her one hell of a time. They'd end up in the dirt, pulling hair and jamming elbows as the treasure of the day would be crumbled and cracked. Most of the junk they stole would end up broken and 'nonreturnable' which was a win in his book.  

Those were the peaceful days before his parents died.

They always had such a nice house in such a nice neighborhood...  And despite all of Vaan's wailing and broken nails from pulling at the foundation, the house couldn't fit into their back pocket. It was such a nice house that a pair of orphans with no real money coming couldn't hope to keep.

When their parents' saving went dry... They fled to the streets. Better than than to be gulped by a 'orphanage' and never be seen again. And living as they were, Reks' tune didn't change.

“I know we need the extra coin but I rather you earn it as a tableboy. Cleaning tables, watching customers and moving boxes is safe, easy work.” Reks stated in his infuriating, I-am-wiser-than-thou, voice. Every time Vaan heard, he felt the desperate need to grab the closest wallet and fling the contents in his brother's face. Tableboy? Was he serious? Vaan could earn more money circulating the shoppers down at the bazaar. He wouldn't be ruining anyone's day, either. Nobody missed a few gil lost in such a tourist trap.

But what pissed him off the most was always-

“But I'm not old enough to work as a tableboy.”

“I know.”

But after being seen roaming the city in rags, Penelo's older brothers smacked the both of them silly and took them in. Life wasn't great but it was better than it was. Vaan wouldn't be calling Penelo's folk anything but Mister and Ma’am but that was only because he had a habit of moving the silverware in crooks and nannies around the house. It eventually became a fun family activity of hanging Vaan upside-down and tickling out the clues as to where he put the forks this time.

But of course, all good things came to an end when the war came. That was what it was called in Dalmasca. The war. Vaan being so young and already losing what little he learned about places outside of the city, didn't care. He had a routine of climbing the empty building, trying to become faster and swift, near Penelo's place and skipping school whenever he had the chance. Then he'd go and bother Reks' at his restaurant job and return home for supper.

Such was his routine that it stayed the same even when people in the home started to be gone. Penelo's brothers left in a group, swearing to their country and to make back before dinner. Only one of their coffins came home. Then Mister and Ma’am went together in a crazy night, with bodies lining the streets and fires breaking out all through the neighborhood. There were funerals. There were cries and all sorts of things piling together that made Vaan's sticky fingers still and bitter.

He kept his head down and didn't think off all the salt drying on his face. Whatever tears he couldn't compare to Penelo who wept every night in the room next door. At least, he had his brother to keep them from falling anymore than they did.

And of course, Reks in his fair, righteous, no-nonsense -being the only sun and moon in Vaan's life- got his stupid self drafted and sent to war. The idiot had even the nerve to be proud about being able to serve his kingdom. Vaan retaliated by hiding his armor and sword for a good two days before Reks swung the information out of him.

Reks went off like a good little solider boy and came back a walking corpse. A broken shell that stared blankly out a window and heard nothing. Vaan and Penelo went to see him the few times they were permitted and found that good, heroic Reks was already dead. They just needed to wait for his body to die before they were allowed to bury him. And with Reks' return, so too was it said that the war ended.

And not in their favor.

Their King was slain by Basch fon Rosenburg, the same man who reduced Reks to his state. The kingdom was taken under Imperial control and whatever freedoms they had before, they were gone.

It happened far too quickly that Vaan couldn't make sense of it.

Not even with Penelo hovering around him and taking him away from Reks' job. The owner didn't like him waiting for Reks to come home.

At times, he sit at the table and expect to see Mister and Ma’am cooking or telling a great story about the lands beyond the Estersand. Full of strange fiends that would give the couriers trouble. They always said they would take him once he got older. He heard echoes of Penelo's loud brothers getting into an argument and fighting in the hallway. Sometimes, he saw Reks walking in, getting ready to make him hand over anything that wasn't his.

Vaan would check his pockets and find that he had nothing to give. His life was a set of tragedies, it seemed. The world was always taking things he didn't even know wasn't steal-able. And the life he and Penelo carved out despite of everyone being dead was up-heaved. Their entire neighborhood was taken as payment for war debt and retribution of property as if they had something to do with it.

And with that they fell.

Like other fellow Dalmascans, they were sweept neatly and violently into the sewers, into Lowtown. Life down there... People died left and right, corpses were thrown into pipes while others went 'missing' and whatever morality Reks' tried to instill in him...

Vaan threw it away.

He'd tell Reks' in the afterlife that he just didn't have it in him to be as good Reks was. And what was so good about being faithful, about giving a damn about others? What was the point in helping other people if you couldn't feed yourself? Vaan didn't know the answer and so he resumed stealing so he could live long enough to figure it out.

Danger was high. Money was low.

And every gil he got always had to go somewhere else first. There were kids in Lowtown, little bastards that deserved more than this. People who couldn't work. People who were sick and croaking and their coughs and wheezing kept everyone awake at night. Clothes needed to be bought. Medicine needed to be bought. Food... There was never enough food. Every copper counted. And as much as Vaan swindled, it was hard to fight the big 0 that followed him after he divided the cash. He always needed to be stealing. There was little time for anything else.

“They hang thieves now, Vaan.” Penelo looked down at him, picking up the slack Reks left behind. She could talk all she wanted and continue to do so after his body hung from the strongest piece of rope available.

“There's always work for you if you stopped by.” Migelo worried, a bangaa who had himself a sundries shop and giving work to the kids from below. The money he was offering just didn't fill Vaan's purse strings. The digits didn't add up from what he could get from snatching just one pouch from a Imperial bucket-head.

They made their points perfectly clear but Vaan hardly listened. And as much as they nagged at him, they would chain him to a sewer pipe if he made one peep about taking up that good pay offered at Nalbina. Seventeen and kicking it, he was nearly grown. Strong. Wasn't that much of a faint. Hauling bricks and scaling walls, he could do it without a breaking a sweat. But they wouldn't hear one word of it with their flapping lips.

And so it leaves him here.

After the parade and seeing the new consul and making a pledge that would have been fool talk in anyone else's mouth. He's breaking into the palace and making out like a bandit in the night. And with that sun crest burning bright in his pocket, he's well on his way.


End file.
